The present invention relates to the skinning apparatus for use in the meat processing industry and, in particular, to a deskinning apparatus having a sectioned toothed roll and a stripper block mating with the toothed roll.
On many types of meat processing machinery where the meat is sectioned, trimmed or simply deskinned, there is normally a deskinning apparatus comprising a knife for separating the skin from the remaining meat and fat, a rotatable toothed roll for placing tension on the skin so as to achieve a clean cut of the skin from the meat and a stripper for eventually urging the skin away from the toothed roll.
Early toothed rolls had been manufactured by placing a number of individual toothed sections on a central shaft wherein each of the sections was essentially as wide as a single tooth width. This is shown in patents such as the Townsend U.S. Pat. No. 2,522,728. These individual sections were somewhat difficult to manufacture, since if they were milled, they had to be worked piece by piece which was very labor intensive. Toothed rolls made up of single tooth width sections tended to have relatively less stability and greater wear than the toothed rolls that replaced them.
In particular, later toothed rolls were manufactured as a series of spaced and circumferentially extending toothed sections cut on the surface of a single circular bar which also acted as the shaft for the toothed roll. An example of this type of toothed roll is seen in the Beasley U.S. Pat. No. 3,741,105. Unfortunately, when a tooth or several teeth of a toothed roll of the Beasley type breaks, the entire toothed roll must be discarded. This is not an infrequent occurance, since the meat on a particular piece of processing machinery has a tendency to engage the toothed roll at or near the same location for each subsequent piece of meat passing thereby. In addition, the single piece toothed rolls are relatively very expensive, since a great deal of labor is expended in milling the entire roll.
In the early toothed rolls, such as is shown in the Townsend U.S. Pat. No. 2,522,728, strippers which urge the skin away from the toothed roll could be sleeved on the roll in grooves between adjacent sections of circumferential rows of teeth, as each section is placed on a central shaft. When the toothed rolls became modified to the Beasley type device, it was no longer feasible to sleeve the strippers on the toothed roll and various assemblies were developed to ride in the groove of the toothed roll, but be attached to a different part of the machinery. Such strippers have had varying degrees of success, but in general have not had the stability or ease in change-out that is desired by operators of the meat processing machinery.